While it is common to compare Boethius’ philosophy with that of his intellectual predecessors and heirs, as far as I know there are no studies comparing Boethius and his most well-known Greek contemporary, Dionysius the Areopagite. Yet both were Christians who were inspired by Plato and deeply influenced by Proclean Neoplatonism. This chapter begins to fill this lacuna in the literature by comparing the way that Boethius in the Consolation of Philosophy and Dionysius in On Divine Names employ key Neoplatonic ideas and metaphors in speaking and thinking about God’s nature and providence. The chapter compares how Boethius and Dionysius employ Neoplatonic sphere and circle metaphors (1) to illustrate how God is both completely simple and yet also has, or rather is, a multiplicity of “attributes” or activities, and (2) to articulate the relationship between God and creatures in terms of remaining, proceeding, and reverting.

Boethius, like his Neoplatonic predecessors, poses a challenge to contemporary readers of the Consolation seeking to understand the world he thinks we occupy. That world involves a timeless, simple, but all-knowing creator god and a time-bound, infinite creation that is patterned from the ideas in the divine mind. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a modest illumination into the world as it is conceived in the Consolation by examining two fundamental Boethian categories and their relationship: the eternal and the temporal. The chapter examines the extent to which we should see these categories providing guidance as to the nature of beings rather than expressing the epistemic perspectives those beings have. By noting the limits, we will draw conclusions about the persistence of temporal beings; the ontological status possessed by future, present, and past states of affairs; and what characterizes eternal existence.

Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy was one of the most influential texts in medieval Europe. Yet it does not receive enough attention in contemporary scholarship on medieval philosophy. This is in part explained by the content and literary form of the Consolation. The direct influence of Plato and late antique Neoplatonism, the dialogue form, the alternating prose and poetry sections, and the wealth of references to classical literature and mythology contrast sharply with the sort of texts most contemporary scholars of medieval philosophy focus on. The essays in this volume tackle these interpretive challenges and reveal some of the rich philosophical insights the Consolation offers. Chapters 1–3 directly address its literary features and their philosophical significance. Chapters 4 and 5 consider the relationship between the Consolation and Boethius’ Christianity. Chapters 6–8 offer three different takes on the philosophy of selfhood, or philosophical anthropology, so central to the Consolation. Chapters 9–13 deal with the more standard metaphysical and theological issues, such as Boethius’ accounts of goodness, being, God, time, eternity, and human freedom.

Recognition of Boethius’ Philosophia as allegorical personification is critical for understanding the positive portrayal given her in the Consolatio. It explains the elaborate identifying markers given in metaphorical reference to the lady as nurse, physician, and teacher. It also helps to explain her ontological status as a source of inspiration for “the prisoner.” This chapter notes her pedagogical strategy in consolation for a patient and compassionate approach, demonstrating feminine qualities that effectively balance the rigorous argument by which she finally moves the prisoner from despair to renewed hope and dignity.

The Consolation defends many claims about human nature and personhood, and depicts an exemplary human person, Boethius the character. This chapter synthesizes the book’s often puzzling and apparently divergent claims, while illustrating them with the depiction of the character of Boethius. It begins by outlining Boethius’ account of human powers and human nature, and then considers the Consolation’s account of human personhood. While Boethius’ account of personhood in the Consolation lacks the technical precision found in his Trinitarian works, he does give an account of some fundamental characteristics of persons consonant with his more explicit treatment in other texts. Finally, the chapter considers three distinctive themes in the Consolation’s account of human persons. First, this text controversially depicts human nature as able to change into that of a god or of a beast. Second, the Consolation depicts all human persons as microcosms, including within ourselves all aspects of the cosmos. Third, Boethius, like many classical writers, depicts human persons as most understandable in relation to beauty. Since this theme sums up earlier ones, the chapter closes there.

It is relatively well known that Buridan’s nominalist semantics changed “the rules of the game” in practically all fields of philosophy and science. For instance, in his semantics, the traditional distinction between essential and accidental predicates is mapped onto the Ockhamist distinction between absolute and connotative terms and concepts. It is, however, still not quite well understood what impact these “new rules” had in particular philosophical disciplines. This essay offers a case study of the late-medieval paradigm change brought about by nominalist “semantical innovations.” In particular, it contrasts Aquinas’ “semantics-driven mereology” with Buridan’s, set against the background of Buridan’s new, nominalist semantics, arguing that the two authors’ differences in their mereological considerations are rooted in the differences between their diverse semantic intuitions. The conclusion of the essay will provide a brief logical and historical evaluation of the paradigmatic changes brought about by these diverse intuitions.

John Buridan devotes an extensive discussion to final causality in two questions of his commentary on Book ii of the Physics: one asks whether the end is a cause (q. 7) and the other asks whether the necessity in natural operations derives from the end or from matter (q. 13). These two questions are the focus of this essay, which provides a detailed presentation of Buridan’s view, explaining its philosophical significance and setting it in the context of the medieval debate about final causality. It also points out the originality of Buridan’s view. Departing from the dominant medieval interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of the final cause, Buridan does not try to defend the idea that the end to which an action or change is directed is properly speaking a cause of that action, and in doing so he undermines the main assumptions at work in the Aristotelian account of finality in nature.

The Quaestiones de secretis mulierum of MS Erfurt-Gotha, Universitäts- und Forschungsbibliothek, Dep. Erf., CA 4º 299, ascribed to John Buridan and recently edited for the first time, are an incomplete set of questions on Pseudo-Albert the Great’s De secretis mulierum. The text contains an extensive treatment of the topic of human generation, with a particular focus on male and female roles in reproduction. This essay retraces Buridan’s view on the generative aspects of female physiology as it emerges in his commentary on Pseudo-Albert’s text. By analyzing this unexplored feature of Buridan’s thought, the essay aims to contribute to the growing research on the biological aspects of Buridan’s natural philosophy.

On October 13, 1438 at the University of St. Andrews, what should have been a routine faculty meeting to approve textbooks for the coming year instead (as faculty meetings are sometimes wont to do) became a sharp disagreement over the choice of logic textbook and of correct procedure.1 The disagreement was over whether the views of Albert the Great and Peter of Spain should be allowed to be taught, or only those of John Buridan. In practice, this should have been a routine discussion, as this amounted to little more than a reaffirmation of a previous decision (indeed one with the same wording) adopted in February 1418. The majority of the masters favored teaching Buridan’s views, and, by extension, a nominalist perspective, while a minority of the masters sought to allow the teaching of the logical views of Albert and Peter. One of them, John de Camera, asked that a public record of the majority decision be made (perhaps as a safeguard against future objections from the minority), which in turn led to John Aylmer (or Athilmer) appealing to the university as well as a second official record being taken. Finally, John de Camera asked for a public record of this appeal, claiming that it violated the 1424 assertion of Faculty self-determination.2 This in turn was eventually elevated to chancellor (and founder) of the University of St. Andrews, Bishop Henry Wardlaw, who in turn dispatched the Bishop of Orkney to help settle the issues raised. It was eventually decided that “the doctrines of Albert or of any other philosopher who was orthodox and free from error should for the time being be free.”3

Bertrand Russell famously remarked that “a logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible.” John Buridan, like many medieval logicians, adopted the same methodology: he developed and refined his theories of truth and other semantic notions against an array of paradoxes. Indeed, in an appendix to his Summulae de dialectica Buridan gave a succinct but comprehensive introduction to his logical philosophy in the form of responses to a collection of sophisms (his Sophismata). Among these sophisms are the logical paradoxes, the so-called “insoluble,” such as the Liar Paradox (is one who says he is lying, lying or telling the truth?). But before he comes to these especially difficult examples, Buridan tackles puzzles which lead him to reject standard accounts of meaning, truth, logical consequence, tense, hyperintensionality, and other semantic notions. In the final chapter of the Sophismata, he deals with various problems involving self-referential propositions, not all of them insolubles. When he turns at last to the insolubles, he elaborates a revision he had already suggested in his Questions on the Sophistical Refutations to the general solution he had developed for them over a long career in the arts faculty at the University of Paris dealing with philosophical puzzles.

Ethical Aristotelianism, with happiness at its core, is enjoying a resurgence. The revival of this view has been driven in large part by historically minded philosophers, who believe that the best versions of this general outlook were developed many centuries ago by some of our astute philosophical forebears. John Buridan shares a similar approach. Like these historically minded philosophers today, he both attempts to reconstruct others’ views – especially those of Aristotle and Seneca – and attempts to respond to potential concerns that one might have through a sensitive and creative development of those inherited views. This sort of creative development is on full display in Buridan’s work on happiness and the good life, as he clarifies, expands, and reshapes Aristotle’s basic conception of happiness.

This essay reconstructs the account that results. It begins with Buridan’s account of happiness understood as the best single human good. It then turns to Buridan’s account of happiness understood as the best collection of human goods, which he takes to be unqualified human happiness. Finally, since unqualified happiness is extremely demanding and thus exceedingly rare, the essay considers varieties of happiness in various restricted senses that Buridan seems to countenance, namely, being happy for a time, being happy within the confines of one’s non-ideal situation in life, and being happy in a domain of one’s life. The author hopes that even in this short span it will become clear that Buridan is among those astute philosophical forebears worth taking seriously as an ethicist, especially for those invested in the project of Ethical Aristotelianism.

The essay studies four aspects of Buridan’s use of principles in his logic. (1) Some principles, such as being said of all or of none, are taken over from the tradition but applied with some qualifications: for example, certain modal syllogisms governed by this principle are said to be “quasi-perfect.” (2) Some principles not used by Buridan’s realist predecessors are introduced, for example, Things that are identical with one and the same thing are identical with each other. (3) Some principles familiar from the tradition are put to powerful new uses, for example, In every pair of contradictories, one is true and the other false, and it is impossible for both to be true together or for both to be false together; again, every proposition is true or false, and it is impossible for the same proposition to be true and false together. (4) Some principles, taken from Porphyry, the Categories, and the Posterior Analytics, which were used by realist logicians to connect the theory of genus and species with the theory of modal syllogisms, are no longer used in that way. It seems that (1)–(3) have the effect of making the theory of consequences (and thus the syllogistic) more “scientific,” while (4) has the effect of separating the theory of consequences from the logical theories contained in the books of the Organon other than the Prior Analytics. If this is so, then Buridan’s logic marks an important stage in the emergence of modern conceptions of logic. A further question is how all of this relates to Buridan’s professed humanistic conception of logic as an art – not a science – “just as the leader is the savior of the army, so reasoning with learning is the leader in human life, whether that life be contemplative, namely, speculative, or active.”

This essay surveys John Buridan’s writings on logic and temporality, arguing that while Buridan’s earliest writings on the Organon show acceptance of a temporal analysis of modality, Buridan’s later writings reflect a plurality of modalities, two based on the power to falsify, and two based on time.